Game Report: Marines @ Swallows - Infinite Improbability Drive FAIL

You know, the only really annoying thing about sitting through a game for four and a half hours only to see the Marines lose, was that Shohei Tateyama didn't get the win. I was perfectly prepared to yell my lungs out with the Marines cheering section and see Tateyama win, believe it or not. Sometimes it's just better to go into these things expecting the worst and hoping for a weird twist of fate to bring you the best.

I went to this one with Steve, who writes the We Love Marines blog. Rather than being a leech, I actually went and bought a ticket for the outfield for a change and met Steve in the left field stands approximately 5 milliseconds before the game began.



The Tsubamegun guys already wrote about the game, though they weren't there. They've covered most of the game action, so I'm just going to try to add my own observations and whatnot.

First and foremost, the Lotte cheering section really is even weirder than the Fighters cheering section when you take away the drums. Something about the entire soccer-song style makes it really hard to keep everyone together on just lyrics alone, which was most noticeable during chance music and a few of the bouncing songs, where you had to watch the stands to know when to stop rather than watching the field, which is no fun.

But, to my credit, I did all of the cheers, including the jumping, and I have a witness. I was also wearing my Bobby 2010 t-shirt, even though the petition has already been submitted:



Shohei Tateyama was really pitching like Yoshinori Tateyama, anyway, walking people and giving up home runs and all that kind of stuff. When he came out of the game in the 5th inning for a pinch-hitter the Swallows were actually down 5-2, though they managed to tie the game by the end of it, so it was a weird realization that he could not win or lose the game at that point. Also, weird to see Ryosuke Morioka not playing for Chunichi, but that's ok.

Hisao Heiuchi came into the game as a defensive replacement in the 8th, which was exciting because he's one of my favorite 1.5-gun guys in Japan, and I was even telling Steve how Heiuchi has a lot of guts and refuses to stay injured, after last year when he was nearly decapitated by a broken bat and was back on the field 5 days later with a bandage on his neck... and then Heiuchi got hit in the knee by a Chang-Yong Lim fastball in the 1oth inning. He crumpled to the ground and had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. I was almost ready to cry.

Oh yeah, and it would have been really exciting to see Akira Ohtsuka get his first at-bat of 2009, except we didn't because he was immediately pulled for a pinch-hitter.

(I find it somewhat amusing that basically almost all of my favorite Marines players are guys who spent a significant amount of time at ni-gun last year.)

But overall, despite that sometimes it felt like maybe the game would deviate from the norm, in the end, all of the following typical things came true:

1) Lotte fans are nuts
2) Shohei Tateyama didn't lose a game
3) Chang-Yong Lim didn't give up a run
4) Aaron Guiel hit a game-winning home run (off of Brian Sikorski, sadly)



And the Swallows won 6-5 in 11 innings in 4 and a half hours, and I had been awake since 6am, didn't get home until midnight, and thus didn't have a chance to write about the game until now... as it is Saturday afternoon and I am actually on a shinkansen hurtling through the Japan countryside towards Hiroshima, which is why this is a little incoherent/brief.

But I did have a decent time at the game hanging out with Steve -- it's actually not so bad to cheer for Lotte when you're actually there with someone.

I'll be back down in Chiba next weekend for most of the games, though I'll be in the left-field stands most likely due to the opponents being the Fighters and all. Friday night is 360 Beer Stadium, where almost all seats are unreserved seating, beer costs 300 yen and soda costs 200 yen, so kind of a modern-day version of Nickel Beer Night. I'm not really a beer drinker, but I still think it'll be amusing to go to.

Game Report: Tigers @ Marines - Takehara Gets Lucky (and To-Lucky)

I don't know why on earth Pau ever wants me to go see Tigers games with him, as every time we watch them or plan to watch them, they lose. Seriously.

But Sunday afternoon we headed down to Chiba together for the first time and for the last time, to catch the Hanshin Tigers taking on the Chiba Lotte Marines. Pau was decked out in his Hiyama t-shirt and Akahoshi towel and Tigers noisesticks and all that stuff, and I was wearing my Satozaki t-shirt and Marines towel and so on. I'm sure most people who saw us thought we were just a bunch of confused gaijin wearing random baseball crap. Little did they know, of course.

The first order of business was actually to get my Bobby 2010 t-shirt from Declan, and to make Pau sign the Bobby 2010 petition. I would be surprised if they didn't hit the 100,000 signatures mark this weekend, given that there should have been around 20,000 Tigers fans around that hadn't been to Chiba yet this season, who are just as crazy as the Marines faithful. They're supposedly presenting the petition to the front office this week. I doubt it'll make any difference, much as I wish it would. Mostly, I hope Bobby stays in Japan since he's been such a great ambassador for Japanese baseball (and he kicks my ass at learning kanji).

The next order of business was to get into the stadium and get Bobby Burgers. We were successful on both counts. It was also amusing that 90% of the people in line at the stadium Lotteria were wearing Tigers gear.

After that, we were just going to sit around and cheer our respective teams and try not to trash-talk too much.

There was some sort of "Let's go to Kyoto!" promotion going on this weekend, which was appropriate given the opponents. As a result, the ceremonial first pitch was thrown out by a representative of the Kansai region...



(However, unlike certain other women who have become representative of baseball in Kansai, this one didn't have a particularly good knuckleball.)

The Marines mascots were also visited by some new friends for the pregame festivities:



Lucky seemed to get along with Rine-chan just fine, but To-Lucky was getting abused by the rest of the mascot squad. They stole his hat and tried to eat it.

For the real game on the field, we had Hiroyuki Kobayashi starting for the Marines and Yuya Andoh starting for the Tigers. I was a little surprised that Kobayashi was starting given that I thought he was still doing the bullpen thing, but hey, whatever works.

Both pitchers and both teams seemed eager to win this one, which was a sign that it'd be a pretty good game, and for the first three innings neither team was able to put a run on the board. Andoh was actually perfect through three as well. The first Hanshin hit was actually almost by accident -- Hirano was trying a safety bunt, popped it up in the air as Imae ran in to catch it... and it sailed OVER Imae, amazingly enough.

The second Hanshin hit of the game was Lion-turned-Tiger Craig Brazell, who hit a home run into the right field stands to make the game 1-0 in the top of the 4th. Brazell's shot was so loud and was a line drive sailing upwards that you could pretty much tell from the crack of the bat that it was going to be gone. The entire Tigers lineup came out of the dugout and lined up to high-five him on his way back, and the camera well emptied to take photos of it, too. (No, I wasn't down there for this game.) I've rarely seen that happen, where everyone actually comes OUT of the dugout.



Katsuragi followed Brazell's shot with another line drive to right, though this one was only a double. After a fly out by Lin, Toritani singled to right, but Ohmatsu (Ohmatsu!) threw the ball in so fast that Katsuragi had to stop at third, and Kanoh grounded out after him.

Before the bottom of the 5th, we saw an interesting sight on the scoreboard screen...



Apparently a couple got married, I assume before the game, and had their reception at Chiba Marine Stadium in one of the big party rooms down the 3rd base line. That's pretty cool. I've been to a wedding at a game once before, but I don't think I'd ever seen such a thing in Japan before. (We were also noting how you don't get the proposals on the big board here like you do in the US, although the Fighters matchmaking seats is kind of similarly embarrassing in a way.)

I was thinking it was a shame that the Marines were losing during their wedding reception though, so conveniently Tomoya Satozaki decided to hit a home run to right field a few minutes later and tied the knot game at 1-1.

And well, 1-1 is where it would stay for a few innings, not for lack of trying on the Marines part. In the 6th they got runners to first and third with two outs but couldn't bring them in, and in the 7th they got runners to first and second with two outs, and Koichi Hori singled to left, and Saburo tried to score from second, third base coach Nishimura waving him in, and well, Saburo was totally out. I'm really not sure I agree with the choice to send him given that the ball wasn't hit that far out to left, Saburo isn't THAT fast a runner, and Fukuura was up to bat next, but I guess when you really want to get a run ahead, sometimes you make risky choices.

Speaking of the 7th, this is what happens when you get the two craziest fanbases together in Japan...


A bunch of Hanshin Tigers fans (must be around 50 of them!) coordinate putting up the lyrics to Rokko Oroshi, the Tigers' song, one letter per person.


And in the right-field stands we have the Marines fans sending an important message as well - ２６をナメるな! or "don't mess with Team 26!" I'm not sure whether this is aimed at the Tigers and their fans, or at the Lotte front office, to be honest.

The Tigers started off the 8th inning with Keiichi Hirano taking a headfirst slide into first base after hitting a grounder off Hiroyuki Kobayashi's leg (which bounced to second base). Hirano was safe, but Akahoshi tried to bunt and hit a short pop fly to the mound, which Kobayashi caught and threw to first in time to double off Hirano, who was preparing to run to second on the sac bunt. Arai also grounded out to the mound.

Jeff Williams came out to pitch the bottom of the 8th, and from the get-go he just ran into some control problems. Masahiko "Gingiragin" Tanaka pinch-hit for Lotte, and basically almost every pitch to him was inside. Tanaka broke his bat on a foul and eventually walked. Ohmatsu hit a pop fly out to center, and then Iguchi also walked. (Ohmatsu is a lefty batter so the ball was going outside for him, but for the righty batters it was inside all the way, almost hitting them a few times.)

Naotaka Takehara, a righty batter, came in to pinch-hit for DH Tasuku Hashimoto, a lefty batter. So Scott Atchison, a righty pitcher, took the mound in place of Jeff Williams, a lefty pitcher.

And Takehara hit the ball to right field! It went out to the warning track, and as the outfielders chased it down, Masahiko Tanaka and Tadahito Iguchi scored, and Takehara made it all the way to third base! 3-1. The crowd went wild -- and on the very next play, Tomoya Satozaki laid down a squeeze bunt. Takehara was off on the play and made it home safe before anyone could get the ball home, but for whatever reason, Satozaki DIDN'T run at all to first, so he was an easy out. Oops. Still, 4-1.

Brian Sikorski closed out the game, and aside from one wild pitch he had everything under control as the Marines won the game 4-1.



It was no real surprise that the game heroes were Hiroyuki Kobayashi for pitching 8 innings of 1-run ball, along with Naotaka Takehara for hitting that huge go-ahead 2-RBI triple.

After the game, I dragged Pau through the Marines museum since I hadn't been through there this year yet, and he had never been there at all. The thing that was new for me there this time was a bunch of ticket displays -- they had things like tickets for a Lotte-Giants 1981 Japan Series that never happened because the Fighters beat them in the playoffs, back in the 1st half 2nd half format era. There were game tickets from the 1970's and 1980's which were pretty neat to see though, and also a whole bunch of old posters that I hadn't seen before, including one from the early 1990's of a "young up-and-coming" infielder named Koichi Hori.

The weird thing is that the "visiting team goods" section seems to have disappeared from the big Marines store in the museum building, to be replaced with more throwback Orions stuff and whatnot. I was a little surprised by that, maybe it was just for interleague time, but I'm not sure.

Steve Novosel was also at this game and wrote about it on his blog, and unlike me he bothered bringing a real camera and sitting somewhere that wasn't behind a net. I kind of hurt my elbow at volleyball on Saturday night so wasn't really up for lugging my big camera to the stadium.

In other news, Hosei did win the college tournament, I still haven't finished cropping photos from the Fuji-Soka game, I may go to Jingu tomorrow for the Yakult-Lotte game if it doesn't rain too much, and I am heading to Hiroshima on Saturday for the Fighters-Carp series at the brand-new stadium! I'm psyched! (I also watched the Fighters-Tigers on TV last night, and if you are counting, which I am, Inaba has now hit 9 home runs this year and I have seen 8 of them.)

Photopostish Game Report: All-Japan College Baseball Semifinals, Hosei vs. Kansai Kokusai

Went to Jingu on Saturday for the All-Japan College Baseball tournament semi-finals. The first game was Hosei University (Tokyo Big 6 League) against Kansai Kokusai University (Hanshin University League), and the second game was Soka University (New Tokyo University League) against Fuji University (North Tohoku League).

Me being a Tokyo Big 6 fangirl, I was really familiar with Hosei, but had to get up to speed on the other teams. I knew that Kansai Kokusai is where the Fighters' Ryo Sakakibara went, but that was about it. The thing is, these tournaments are a great way to see a lot of the good college teams. It's just a shame all the games were held during work hours for the most part.

I dragged Gen to the games because he's cool and I thought he'd enjoy them because he also loves Koshien, and to me, college baseball is like the spirit of Koshien with a higher level of play. Although "dragged" might not really be the right word since actually, he was kind enough to show up early and get two great seats right behind the first-base dugout so we could take a ton of photos.

Ace Kazuhito Futagami started for Hosei, and my thought was that if he could go most of the game, Hosei would probably win. Given I didn't know that much about Kansai Kokusai's starter Tajima except that he was really short (like 165 centimeters) and left-handed. He wasn't getting a ton of speed on his pitches but he was getting decent movement.

However, Hosei put a run on the board from the get-go; their leadoff man Shingo Kamegai singled to right, Shota Waizumi bunted him up, and freshman Hiroshi Taki batted him in. Taki eventually ended up being 4-for-4 on the day with all three of Hosei's RBIs.

Hosei's next two runs came in the 3rd inning and 5th inning, both on the EXACT same sequence: Tetsuro Matsumoto leads off with a single to center, Shingo Kamegai sac bunts him to second, Shota Waizumi hits a fly ball out to center for the 2nd out, and Hiroshi Taki singles to right to score Matsumoto. No joke. In the 5th inning, as the sequence unfolded the second time and Waizumi popped out to right, I said to Gen, "And now Taki singles to right and scores Matsumoto..." and Taki grounded to first, and somehow the ball must have hit a rock or something, because it suddenly BOUNCED up in the air over Kansai's first baseman Kanemaru and went into right field! Amazing.

Kansai Kokusai, for their part, managed to put two runs on the board against Futagami; in the third inning third baseman Yamamoto singled to right, was bunted up by catcher Fukuyama, and then shortstop Watanabe hit a single to right, and for whatever reason they stopped Yamamoto at third (I think he could have made it). Left fielder Sosuke Tanaka grounded to second, and Yamamoto scored as Watanabe was out on the force; second baseman Yoshikawa grounded out after that.

A similar sequence unfolded in the top of the 7th when Yamamoto walked, Fukuyama bunted him up, but this time Watanabe struck out before Sosuke Tanaka singled to drive in Yamamoto. It left the game seeming pretty close at 3-2.

For whatever reason, though, after Kansai Kokusai pitcher Masuda (who came in in the 3rd inning) struck out Tetsuro Matsumoto to start off the bottom of the 7th, they took him out for left-handed pitcher Kodai (I think) Matsunaga, and that was where the floodgates started to open. Shingo Kamegai singled to third, where third baseman Yamamoto kind of bobbled the ball, and then Shota Waizumi grounded to second; Kamegai was out on the force but Waizumi was safe at first (which is still kind of crazy since it looked like a really nice double play from our angle). So instead of the inning being over, Hiroshi Taki hit his fourth single of the day, this time to left field. Kansai Kokusai switched pitchers again, this time to Naohito (I think) Kitajima, a righty. Kitajima pitched to Masatoshi Matsumoto, Hosei's Big 6 batting champ who hadn't yet gotten a hit in the tournament... and Matsumoto chose that exact moment to hit a double to left field. Waizumi scored. Taki scored. Hosei was up 5-2.

Although they stopped the game for a few minutes in the 8th inning when Futagami came out for an injury delay, he came back into the game. The 8th inning was sloppy but the Kansai batters kept hitting groundballs and the Hosei fielders kept throwing out the lead batter at third. Futagami eventually finished out yet another complete game, throwing 115 pitches, as Hosei advanced to the finals.

I stayed for the second game too, but I don't have time to write about it yet (which is going to be weird if I do write about it after the finals actually occur, but hey).

Here are some of my photos, in no particular order:


Kazuhito Futagami in the first inning.

A sequence of photos:

Tetsuro Matsumoto comes running home in the third inning...


...he makes a diving headfirst slide and grab for the plate just as Kansai Kokusai catcher Fukuyama gets the ball...


...and he's safe! safe! Hosei goes back ahead 2-1!


Kansai starter Tajima, who was little and left-handed.


Kansai Kokusai pitcher Naoya Masuda at a weird angle.


Masuda comes back to the dugout.


Kansai Kokusai catcher Tatsuya Fukuyama comes back home after the batters fail to drive him in. He got all dusty taking a headfirst slide into first base.


Lefty pitcher Matsunaga.


Hiroshi Taki high-fives Shota Waizumi after Masatoshi Matsumoto drives them both in with the double in the 7th inning.


Kokusai pitcher Kitajima.


Hosei slugger Ryo Imai, who didn't play in this game, but who literally spent the entire game standing outside of the dugout yelling into a megaphone. He's the crazy kid who hit that walkoff homerun that won Hosei the Big 6 championship title.


Kazuhito Futagami is still pitching into the 9th.


Final score: Hosei 5, Kansai Kokusai 2.


In other notes...

Hosei had their usual full band out there, but Kansai Kokusai seemed to have only brought their tubas and baritone horns with them. I don't know if that's normal or not for them. At first, it had this really weird effect of feeling totally somber, like a funeral dirge, but once you got used to it, it was actually really cool! They were playing things like Whiteberry's Natsumatsuri, and YMCA, and all this crazy stuff, and they do cheers like the Hanshin Tigers' wasshoi, and so on.

About halfway through the game, a friend of mine who's a baseball scout came over to chat for a while. It was really good to see him, but besides that, it made me have two revelations about Kazuhito Futagami: first, his name which looks kind of like a Japanese proverb (二神一人, two gods one person) is actually that way on purpose; Futagami is from a kind of middle-of-nowhere fishing town in Kochi. Second, I realized that even though he's a really good pitcher, he has really good control and so on, the reason I just find him boring to watch is because I don't see anything special about him. Whereas I like watching Kisho Kagami because he's crazy. I like pitchers who seem somewhat out of the ordinary, and while Futagami is pretty talented, from a non-scout eye like mine, he's just not that exciting.

Also, sunburn. Sigh. I put on some sunscreen but apparently did a sloppy job, and when I played volleyball later that evening I was really feeling the pain. Oops.

I'll try to post about the Soka-Fuji game in a day or two -- first I'm headed to Chiba for the Marines-Tigers game, and something tells me that'll be more important to write about first.

Fighters Kanto Interleague Weekend, Day 4: Fighters @ Swallows - Abort, Retry, Fail?


Welcome to Monday Night Baseball! You are a pro baseball team in Japan!
Tonight you are facing the Yakult Swallows.
You have one runner on first base in the first inning.

> get a run

I don't understand that command. You must mean "bunt".

> bunt

You have a runner on second base and one out. Inaba is at the plate. He is good at baseball.

> hit the ball

You try, but you only succeed in grounding out and striking out.

> strike the opponents out

You try, but they aren't swinging. Perhaps you meant "walk them"?

> walk them

OK. Fortunately, your fielding prevents them from scoring... for now.
It's the third inning. You have a runner on first and one out.

> get a run

I don't understand that command. You must mean "ground into a double play".

> ground into a double play

OK.

> inventory

You are carrying:
1 decent outfielder
4 backup outfielders
3 catchers
3 decent infielders
7 dudes who really can't do anything but DH or play 1B
1 golden rookie (cursed)

It's the 4th inning. You have a runner on first and no outs.

> get a run

I don't understand that command. You must mean "bunt".

> bunt

OK. The rest of your batters also fail to do anything productive.

It's the 6th inning and the other team is up to bat.

> throw a strike

OK. The batter hits you for 1 base point of damage.

> strike them out

I don't understand that command. You must mean "walk them".

> walk them

OK. There are now runners on first and second.

> strike them out

I don't understand that command. You must mean "walk them".

> walk them

OK. The bases are now loaded.

> swear

You swear. It does 2 points of damage as Guiel hits the next pitch into centerfield.

They have gained the lead.

Swallows: 2
Fighters: 0

> change pitchers for the love of god already

OK. To who?

> put in Ejiri

OK. Ejiri allows another runner to score on a groundout but otherwise gets out of the inning intact.

Fighters: 0
Swallows: 3

> sing fight song

Your fans sing the fight song. You now have enough mana points to cast one spell.

> cast "hit ball"

OK. You wave your wand very hard and the ball goes bounding towards the third baseman and the throw is not in time! It does 1 base point of damage.

> get a run

I don't understand that command. You must mean "walk".

> walk

OK.

> hit the ball

OK. You wave a Nioka at the ball and it does another base point of damage. The bases are now loaded.

> sing bouncy chance music

OK. The chance music recharges your mana points.

> recast "hit ball"

You wave a Makoto Kaneko at the ball. It does another hit point of damage and loads the bases.

Fighters: 1
Swallows: 3

They change pitchers to Matsuoka.

> cast "hit ball"

I'm sorry, you are out of mana points. You fly out to second instead.

> cast "hit ball"

I'm sorry, you are out of mana points. You strike out instead.

> hit the ball

With what?

> kensuke tanaka's bat

OK. You hit the ball with Kensuke Tanaka's bat. It does 2 points damage.

They no longer have the lead.

Fighters: 3
Swallows: 3

> get a run

I don't understand that command. You must mean "strike out".

> kutabare yomiuri

You wave your umbrella around and dance for the 7th inning stretch.

> get a run

I don't understand that command. You must mean "fail to do anything productive against former closer Ryota Igarashi and current closer Chang-yong Lim".

> yeah that

OK.

> change to a decent pitcher for the bottom of the 9th

OK. To who?

> put in micheal nakamura

I'm sorry, that item is not in your inventory.

> put in tateyama

OK. Yoshinori Tateyama takes the mound for you.

> put in shohei tateyama

I'm sorry, that item is not in your inventory.

> steal their tateyama

I don't understand that command. You must mean "give up a double."

> put in the GOOD tateyama do you hear me

I don't understand that command. You must mean "lose the game 4-3 on a walkoff single by Shinichi Takeuchi".

> quit

Do you want to save before you quit? (y/n)

> y

Then why did you put in Tateyama? Zing!

Final score:
Fighters: 3
Swallows: 4

You are in a maze of twisty little interleague games, all different...

Fighters Kanto Interleague Weekend, Day 3: Fighters @ Swallows - All it Takes is Some Takedas

For me, Sunday's game was almost as much about socializing as it was about watching baseball. Once you really start going to a lot of games and get to know various groups of people in the stands, you find that there are complicated social rites that you have to perform. They call it "aisatsu", which sort of just means "greetings", but there's more to it than just simple greetings. You have to make an effort to make sure you acknowledge and say hello to everyone you know before the game, and try your best to say goodbye to everyone after the game and tell them they did a good job cheering. Whether you're at work, or at home, or at a baseball game, it's considered rude not to make an effort to properly greet people, if possible.

Usually I go to Fighters games after work and so I barely have 10 minutes before the game starts to get settled, fill out the starting lineups in my scorecard, get all of my cheering stuff ready, etc, so it's okay that I only say hi to the people I'm sitting with.

On Sunday, I got into the Jingu outfield bleachers at 4:30 or so for a 6pm game, and fortunately some friends of friends saved seats for me. I suppose I could have just sat around waiting for the game to start for an hour and a half, but that's really no fun, so I wandered around to do things like getting food and filling out All-Star ballots and such, which also meant saying hi to a whole bunch of people as I walked past them. I also made a point of trying to go down to the field to say hi to the foreign Fighters players, but the guards wouldn't let me, not even for a minute, even after I said I needed to do aisatsu, so I could only stand about 5-6 rows back from the field behind the reserved seats. In a moment of weirdness, the team interpreter actually pointed me out to Brian Sweeney, so I got to wave hi and yell a few "what's up?" kind of things over everyone (and as usual ask when he was pitching, which was not Monday! Doh).

(I also went to try to say hi to the Tsubamegun guys, but wouldn't you know it, they weren't there. It definitely got me a LOT of strange looks in the right field stands, like "Why has this poor confused gaijin wandered into enemy territory?" since I was wearing my Fighters jersey.)

Pau showed up shortly after I finished helping a college student in the ouendan with their English homework; I get roped into some crazy things sometimes when I'm going around saying hello to people. Shortly after that, the pre-game festivities started, like lineups and cheering and so on. This is where I was sittting:



And this is the song the people on the other side of the field were (theoretically) singing before the game. Bad karaoke, anyone?



It, uh, goes nicely with things like "Just Play To Win".

So yeah, there was a game. Masaru Takeda started for the Fighters and Ryo Kawashima started for the Swallows, and there were no hits on either side for the first three innings. Infact, the first five innings of the game went by in about an hour and 15 minutes, with a total of three baserunners in that entire time period, all on hits.

Not to say that the game went by without incident. First, for whatever reason (has Jingu always been this way and I just didn't notice?) the ouendan didn't have drums to go with their trumpets. It was odd enough to me that I took a video of us doing Kensuke Tanaka's cheer song, because the Kensuke call without two drumbeats was so strange:



Seriously, doing all the cheers with no drums was kind of strange, especially things like the Inaba Jump and the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang chance music.

Then there was an ouendan incident in the 5th inning, kind of -- Glasses Dude was standing up on a railing and, I'm not sure exactly what happened but I THINK that some guy complained that he was in his way, because next thing I knew, two of the ouendan guys were taking off their jackets and running up to this guy in a "WHAT did you say?" kind of thing. It was just far enough away that I couldn't hear what they were saying, though. Very weird. But the ouendan were in a grumpy mood the rest of the day, and at one point I saw the guy I always think of as "Shaggy" basically go up to a lady who was filming the ouendan, and he kind of just grabbed her camera and yelled at her for filming. REALLY weird, I've never seen them quite so grumpy before.

Anyway, the Fighters finally put some runs on the board in the 6th inning. Shota Ohno led off and was hit in the left shoulder by a pitch. Masaru Takeda successfully bunted him up to second, and then Kensuke Tanaka walked. Tsuboi sadly struck out, but then Inaba came up to the plate, and even though I claimed he would hit a home run and he didn't, what he DID do is single to center, scoring Ohno and sending Kensuke to third. 1-0. Shinji Takahashi followed that up with another single, scoring Kensuke. 2-0. Whee! Itoi grounded into a fielder's choice after that, but the game was finally going somewhere!

Pau made me take this photo in the bottom of the 6th because we both take a special interest in "Watch out for balls" signage:



Note that by adding an unnecessary article to the sign rather than adding the word "foul", they have made it all the more amusing.

Pau also noticed that the teenage girl in front of us must have been named Haruka, because every time the line "Tobase haruka, sutando e" in Makoto Kaneko's cheer song came up, the girl's mother would sing it and point to her with the word "Haruka". I know if it was me, I would have been whining a lot of "Mooooommmm, cut it out" after the first time, but this girl seemed to be embarrassed yet putting up with it. Hmm.

Koyano led off the top of the 7th by also getting hit with a pitch in the left shoulder, by pitcher Jun Hagiwara. I guess that's what we get for me saying "Hagiwara sucks" as he took the mound. Kaneko walked, and then Shota Ohno sac bunted into a double play (I'm not sure I've ever denoted a play as "FAIL B1-5-3" in a scorecard before), bouncing the bunt up to the mound, where Hagiwara threw it to third in time to get Koyano and then Miyamoto relayed it back to first in time to get Ohno. Sheesh.

It all worked out okay as Kensuke led off the 8th with a double off Masao Kida, advanced on a Tsuboi groundout, and eventually score on a Shinji Takahashi sac fly to center. 3-0.

Masaru got a groundout from Guiel to start off the 8th and was then pulled for Yoshinori Tateyama (and I still contend that their Tateyama is much, much better than our Tateyama), who fortunately only succeeded in giving up a ground rule double to Yuichi Matsumoto, before giving way to Hisashi Takeda in the 9th, who closed out the game pretty easily, so the Fighters won. Yay.


Final score, 3-0 Fighters.


Masaru Takeda as game hero, with a scary ferocious bear behind him.


I'll take Fangirls of Players With Uniform Numbers Ending in 1 for $500, Alex!

(Actually, these were our friends in the row ahead of us, ducking down while we made our row of Tsuboi fan stuff.)


And here is me with my Ohno sign, which I made Pau take a picture of.


I'm off to Jingu for Monday night's game. I might add a bit more to this later, but maybe not. It's only Monday and the school week is already kind of wearing me out.

Fighters Kanto Interleague Weekend, Day 2: Fighters @ Giants - Sometimes An Ace Doesn't Beat A Jack

It's always frustrating when your ace loses. But it's even more frustrating when your ace gets defeated by your own team's former fan favorites.

Saturday was yet another day in the left-field bleachers for me at the Tokyo Dome. Shortly after I arrived, they announced the starting pitchers. I already knew Darvish was starting for the Fighters, but we also found out Utsumi was starting for the Giants. Is this an encouraging sign or what?



(If you can't read it, the left half says the Fighters battery is Darvish-Tsuruoka, with Darvish's record being 7-1, 1.09 in 9 games. The right half says the Giants battery is Utsumi-Abe, with Utsumi's record being 1-3. 3.40 in 9 games.)

I'm a bit of a closet Utsumi fan (you know, in the "I would love you if you were not on the Giants" sort of way), and secretly I know he just had a shaky start to the season and has been just getting a little unlucky recently, but seriously, I'd still pick Darvish to win this matchup, especially since recently our better hitters have been right-handed, not left-handed, what with Sledge out for a bit and having Shinji, Koyano, and Kaneko in the middle of the lineup.

But, I was wrong.

I blame these guys:



The guy on the left, you probably know who he is, Alex Ramirez. The guy on the right is Takahito Kudoh, and he was a Fighters outfielder last year, until someone in the front office had the brilliant idea to trade Kudoh and Micheal to the Giants for Nioka and Hayashi. Kudoh was relatively popular with Fighters fans for a new-ish semi-regular outfielder, probably because he runs very fast and makes nice plays in the outfield, and wears high socks and seems like an all-around nice guy.

Infact, as he came out to take practice in left field, about half the Fighters cheering section started yelling "KUDOH-CHAN!!!!!!" until he turned around and smiled and bowed to us. Ramirez also turned around and started waving and smiling, I'm not sure he realized what was going on.

Anyway, the game was going swimmingly well for a while. The Fighters put their first run on the board in the second inning, when Koyano doubled down the left-field line and then Itoi followed it up with what looked like a home run but ended up hitting the left-field wall pretty high instead for a double, scoring Koyano, 1-0. Kaneko walked, and then we had Tsuruoka and Darvish up next, who popped out and grounded out respectively. It felt like a CL game, that's for sure.

The fun part is, I got to sing Darvish's cheer song for the first time in a real game!


雄叫びあげて　唸るその剛腕　我らのエース　日本のエース
osakebi agete unaru sono gouwan warera no ACE nihon no ACE

Much cooler than all that stuff about "your uniform number is 14-3" and so on.

Fighters fielding ruled the next few innings, especially when Tsuruoka executed a "Thou Shall Not Bunt" play and snagged an Utsumi bunt to nail Lee at second, followed up by a 1-6-3 double play off of Wonder Boy Sakamoto.

And in keeping with the entire "Inaba only hits homeruns when Deanna is watching" gig, Inaba hit another home run in the 6th inning, putting the Fighters up 2-0. Whee! That makes 8 homers for him on the season, 7 of which I actually saw.

The story turns sour in the bottom of the 6th, at this exact moment:



Former Fighter Takahito Kudoh pinch-hit for Tetsuya Utsumi, and hit a single to center. Well, okay. We like Kudoh, we don't mind him getting a hit, sure.

Unfortunately, Hayato Wonder Boy Sakamoto followed it up with another single, Kudoh running to third, and then Matsumoto followed THAT up with ANOTHER single, scoring Kudoh for the first Giants run. 2-1.

Former Fighter Michihiro "Clean-shaven Doppleganger" Ogasawara came to the plate after that... and unfortunately he ALSO hit a single to center, over a jumping Kaneko. Crap. Sakamoto scored on the play, 2-2. And would you believe it, but it didn't stop there -- Alex Ramirez ALSO singled, scoring Matsumoto on the play for the go-ahead run, 3-2.

You see, it started with Kudoh and ended with Rami. A wild pitch during Kamei's at-bat allowed Ogasawara and Ramirez to move to 2nd and 3rd, but then Kamei lined to second and Kensuke Tanaka fired the ball to third to catch Ogasawara coming back, for an inning-ending double play.

The Giants went from biding time with their pitchers to putting in their good guys -- Kiyoshi Toyoda, Tetsuya Yamaguchi, and Marc Kroon. Toyoda dealt with the Fighters pretty quickly in his inning, though they really should have done better against Yamaguchi.

In the 8th, Jason Botts pinch-hit to lead off the inning (his first top-team at-bat this year), but grounded out. Inaba singled after that though, and so did Shinji, Inaba moving to 2nd. We started the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang chance music finally, AND KOYANO ALSO SINGLED, except that it was to center, and Inaba was running home on the play, and it was a really close call as Matsumoto threw the ball in from center, and Abe kind of blocked the plate, and we really couldn't see it from the outfield, but all we knew was that Inaba got called out. And that sucked. And even more chance music couldn't buy Itoi a hit.

The 9th was also interesting, but fruitless. Makoto Kaneko started off by laying off of Kroon's pitches, so he walked. Tsuruoka bunted Kaneko to second cleanly. Then... then Naoto Inada pinch-hit for Darvish. And what happened could be best described as bizarre: Naoto grounded back to the mound. Kaneko was already halfway between 2nd and 3rd base at that point -- and Kroon got the ball and turned to see where Kaneko was, and Kaneko kind of stood there staring at him. Kroon ran out to tag Kaneko, who ducked and started running back to 2nd. Kroon chased him. Eventually Kroon did make the tag, but in doing so, he kind of leaned out too far and fell down after tagging Kaneko, sprawling out on 2nd base.

Kroon sat on 2nd base for a while, and a couple of team staff members came out to check on him, and he walked back into the dugout. As Fighters fans we did a few "Zettai katsuzo Fighters" cheers and so on, until Kroon came back out to pitch to Kensuke Tanaka. And unfortunately, Kensuke struck out to end the game, so the Giants won 3-2.



Someone's got to explain to me why Utsumi was a game hero when he wasn't even winning the game when he was pinch-hit for, despite that he was still the pitcher of record when the Giants went ahead. I think there was another game hero too, but I didn't stay long enough to find out. Watching Giants fans celebrate is not exactly my favorite thing in the world.

I realized that part of what pisses me off about Giants fans is that... they're like... they're just not diehard baseball fans for the most part. A lot of them follow the Giants because that's the easy route -- the most convenient stadium, the team shown the most often on TV, etc, etc. It's like, "I like baseball, but I don't have the time or energy to be totally crazy about it, so I'll be a Giants fan." They go to the games at the Tokyo Dome and wave their towels, and know who the famous players are, but don't know much more. I can't imagine the average Giants fan following the team around the country like the fans of other teams do. And why would they have to? Giants fans are everywhere and they're always on TV, so there's no NEED to travel.

Note: I realize there ARE diehard Giants fans just as there are for any team. It's just that it certainly feels like a lot more of them are casual fans than of any other team, and that a lot more casual baseball fans are Giants fans than any other team. I mean, you can't BE a casual Tigers fan, for example. It just doesn't work that way.

Anyway, onward and upwards. I'm heading to Sunday's game at Jingu to see the Fighters take on the Swallows. I do, however, plan to dance the umbrella dance and sing a lot of "kutabare Yomiuri".

Fighters Kanto Interleague Weekend, Day 1: Fighters @ Giants - Shaggy Shugo's Shaky Start

Dicky Gonzalez picked up his sixth straight win to start the season, but most of it was because Shugo Fujii gave up 4 runs in the first inning as the Giants beat the Fighters 5-2.

Olympic swimmer Kosuke Kitajima threw out the first pitch, which was kind of neat. The Giants certainly do get their share of big names to take the mound for them.

Really, part of the disastrous first inning could be blamed on Kensuke Tanaka for kind of bobbling a ball and missing a double play, and even for letting Hayato Sakamoto on base to lead off the game. But neither of them were technically errors and they were pretty tough plays.

It's hard to come back from a 4-0 deficit in the first inning, though, and the Fighters never did.

Fujii also kind of got himself caught in a stupid rundown in the third inning which meant they went from runners at the corners with one out to runners at first and second with two outs. Inaba delivered a single which scored Kensuke, but should have been two runs. I'm not sure whether to blame that on Fujii or on 3rd base coach Makishi, who's been getting a lot of ire from the fans this year.

Inaba also hit a 125-meter home run in the 5th inning. In case you are counting, I think Inaba has hit 7 home runs this year, and I think I've seen 6 of them. Seriously. If he can only hit home runs when I'm watching, this should be a good weekend for him.

Oh yeah, and Giants infielder Takayuki Terauchi doubled his hit count for the season by getting 3 of them in the game.

I was really happy to see Shintaro Ejiri come into the game, and to also get 3 scoreless innings! His new sidearm delivery seems to be working out for him, although he was also saved by an awesome play by Hichori Morimoto in the 4th inning -- Terauchi singled to left and tried to stretch it into a double, and Hichori managed to get the ball in the leftfield corner AND throw it to first in time to get Terauchi out. It was such a nice play that we actually all stood up and cheered for Hichori on his way back to his position. (It is interesting that as away fans, we're behind the left fielder instead of behind Inaba at the Tokyo Dome.)

Sho Nakata pinch-hit in the 7th inning. He struck out. But, this was the first time I'd actually sung his cheer song, so maybe I will learn it after all. I kind of like how they make a pun on his name by ending the cheer in "翔たけ中田" - "habatake Nakata", meaning to fly, using the kanji from his name, Sho. Cute.

Anyway, Gonzalez was the game hero and I didn't really stick around for his hero interview.



But in something more fun, look at the new cool sticker on my cellphone!



My friend Hiromi went to Hokkaido for Golden Week and she made me a sheet of Fighters name stickers with my name on them in katakana (ディアナ)! The stickers are really cute and I'm very happy, so I immediately put one on my cellphone, and one on my scorebook, and I should probably put one on my cheer sticks, and so on. Very very cool.

Also, I made a cheering sign for Shota Ohno. I'll try to remember to get a photo of it when I go back for Saturday's game, even though Darvish is starting which means Tsuruoka will be catching. It also hopefully means the Fighters will win, which would be nice.

Tokyo Big 6: "Ohishi Theater" takes over at Soukeisen

I didn't actually make it to Soukeisen this weekend for various reasons, mostly weather-related -- not really worth braving the Handkerchief Posse crowds to sit out in the rain, basically. Instead, I went to Fighters Town Nippori (aka Yakiniku Erika) with Pau (who is a Hanshin fan) and we watched the Tigers-Fighters game there. The Fighters won and we got to chat with Hichori's dad a bit -- and even he said that Hichori's in kind of a slump these days. Very sad.

My school had its Sports Day on Sunday, so I couldn't go to Jingu that day, and it rained pretty hard in the late afternoon anyway. But I had Monday off in exchange for Sunday, so I planned to go to Jingu no matter what -- either for the third game of Soukeisen or for the first day of the rookie tournament. And well, Waseda won the second Soukeisen game on Sunday, so there was no third game.

When I heard about Sunday's Soukeisen game, though, I was REALLY sad that I couldn't be there. Not because Waseda won, but because of what some newspapers have dubbed Ohishi Theater.

If you somehow don't know already, I've been a huge fan of Waseda's pitcher Tatsuya Ohishi (大石達也) for the last few seasons. He can throw 155 km/h and strikes batters out left and right. Last fall he seriously struck out 34 batters in 16 innings, and that was without facing Tokyo. He allowed 5 runners all season. As a reliever, he's really amazing. This season Waseda tried having him start a game and that didn't work so well (probably because it just so happened that they tried it against Hosei, who were the eventual champions), but he still came out of the season having struck out 22 in 20 innings, a WHIP of 1.0 and an ERA of 2.70.

For a while it always felt like nobody really paid attention to him because they were so busy going nuts over Yuki "Handkerchief Prince" Saitoh, but lately I've noticed a lot of stuff about Ohishi-kun in the press. The cover story for the S09 issue of Daigaku Yakyu has Waseda's Ohishi, Saitoh, and Fukui-kun. The "featured interview pair" in College Base Heroes magazine is with Saitoh and Ohishi. Everyone generally agrees that he's going to be a high draft pick next year; me, I want to see him as the Fighters' closer in a few years, of course. I can dream, right?

But nothing, nothing, NOTHING tops what he did on Sunday.

At first when I looked at the box score from Sunday's Soukeisen game, where Waseda won 6-5, I did a double-take: why was there a [6] next to Ohishi's name? Did he START at SHORTSTOP? They put their CLOSER in as the STARTING SHORTSTOP? Whaaaaaat?

And as reported in several places, that is exactly what they did. There's even photo proof.

Not only that -- he was apparently GOOD as the shortstop. He made diving catches to stop grounders, turned double plays, and to add to all of that, he also HIT A TRIPLE at the plate and scored a run. I didn't actually watch the game so it's hard to say, but I'd bet he was actually better than Gotoh out there. Ohishi was quoted as saying, though, "This was my first time as a shortstop in an official game. I'm not very good at fielding grounders. I had to work very hard and was really worried."

Then during the bottom of the 7th inning, while Waseda was at-bat, and in the midst of the rain that was falling, he was told to go to the bullpen and warm up to pitch, which he did, and he took the mound for the 8th and 9th innings, allowing no runs and no hits (though no strikeouts). All that AFTER having played the first 7 innings of the game as the shortstop.

Waseda's manager Ohtake apparently said that he was a "treasured player" and remarked, "I'd like to bat him in the 3-spot. If he devoted himself to playing shortstop, I think he could win a batting title!" and pointed out that players like Ichiro, Toritani, etc, all started out as pitchers. Ohishi, for his part, said something to the effect of "Well, now that I've tried being a shortstop, I think I've discovered that I truly do want to be a pitcher..."

Yeah.

Well, on that note, the Tokyo Big 6 season is officially at an end. By taking Soukeisen 2-0, Waseda actually managed to technically finish the season in 2nd place, having only lost a series to Hosei, the champions. Keio finished in fourth place, behind Meiji. There is light at the end of the tunnel though, as Keio and Meiji are facing off for the rookie championship tomorrow. I'll post about Monday's rookie games in a bit. (Though for the other Koshien nerds, before you ask: I saw Yusuke Yamada play for Rikkio, but did not see Kei Tamura pitch for Keio except in the bullpen.)

Also, the Best 9 for this season were announced:
Pitcher: Kazuhito Futagami, Hosei
Catcher: Shuhei Ishikawa, Hosei
First: Shogo Shashiki, Meiji
Second: Masatoshi Matsumoto, Hosei
Third: Tetsuya Urushibata, Keio
Short: Hiroshi Taki, Hosei
Outfield: Shingo Kamegai, Hosei
Outfield: Toshiki Yamada, Waseda
Outfield: Hiroki Kojima, Waseda

I don't think this actually has a damn thing to do with what position they play at all -- this is basically the best batters in the league by position, plus the Hosei Championship Factor. I'm pretty sure Hiroshi Taki wasn't the best shortstop in the league by fielding, as I believe he led the league in errors, but he certainly was by batting.

The brackets are full for the big college tournament next week, by the way. A lot of the usual suspects are there, but some others too; will be interesting to see how that goes.